What cracks me up about ebay is bidders never do their homework. It is a seller's marketplace. I bought one of these manuals two years ago from Digikey...I just checked and they had 32 in stock for $9.95 ea. If I had known that I could get it from Microchip for free I would have asked them for a copy. I just bought a new digital camera and it was typically going for $75-100 more on ebay than what I paid for mine at a retail store.

Happens in "real life" too. An Auckland auctioneer (Fitzgeralds for
those in NZ) has PC & peripheral sessions from time to time. Mostly
it's a company's inventory that's been replaced by a newer system.
I went to one last year with a friend who was looking for a cheap PC
and was absolutely dumb-founded by the prices. I distinctly remember
a very ordinary 500MHz / inkjet printer / monitor going for NZ$2200
(~US$1100 at the time), and that was pretty much how things went
for the whole evening. My friend kept his hands firmly down. This was
at a time when I'd paid half that for a 2.4GHz stuffed full of fancy cards

More than 50% of the bidders at the auctioneers were of a particular
ethnicity and paying well over market price (AFAICT looking through
the second-hand papers). I couldn't quite figure that out, unless they
have too much money, but you don't get to keep / make money by
going nuts at an auction. And an auction room just can't be less
intimidating than a newspaper. Whatever, we got what we wanted
later on for a good price through an advertised private sale

I think the lure/excitement of auctions is landing that "winning" bid on something
tons of other folks were bidding on rather than actually getting a decent price or
"deal" on anything. It definitely is a sellers market.

> > What cracks me up about ebay is bidders never do their homework
>
> Happens in "real life" too. An Auckland auctioneer (Fitzgeralds for
> those in NZ) has PC & peripheral sessions from time to time. Mostly
> it's a company's inventory that's been replaced by a newer system.
> I went to one last year with a friend who was looking for a cheap PC
> and was absolutely dumb-founded by the prices. I distinctly remember
> a very ordinary 500MHz / inkjet printer / monitor going for NZ$2200
> (~US$1100 at the time), and that was pretty much how things went
> for the whole evening. My friend kept his hands firmly down. This was
> at a time when I'd paid half that for a 2.4GHz stuffed full of fancy cards
>
> More than 50% of the bidders at the auctioneers were of a particular
> ethnicity and paying well over market price (AFAICT looking through
> the second-hand papers). I couldn't quite figure that out, unless they
> have too much money, but you don't get to keep / make money by
> going nuts at an auction. And an auction room just can't be less
> intimidating than a newspaper. Whatever, we got what we wanted
> later on for a good price through an advertised private sale
>
> --
> http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics
> (like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics
>

> I think the lure/excitement of auctions is landing that "winning" bid
> on something tons of other folks were bidding on rather than actually
> getting a decent price or "deal" on anything

IKWYM, but you'd think common sense would kick in when the price
for a PC, and let's not forget it's an old crummy 2nd-hand PC, is getting
2x or 3x or even 4x what you'd pay for it elsewhere. And probably be
able to haggle for too. => auction - price goes up, private sale - price
goes down, hmmm. Even retailers might do you a deal for cash on a
big ticket item

It's not always a sellers market. I've had items that got zero interest for several listings and then on a following listing a few came in and bid it way up. It all averages out. The more something is listed though, the less excitement there is. Then the real value shows up.
Take a PicStart for example, at one point these were going for around $200. Now they don't get much more than $130.
Someone recently bought an original PicStart for $51 and also got several manuals including the embedded book.
It interesting to watch and even more fun to be a part of.

Bob Japundza <piclistKILLspamBRAVOAVTECH.COM> wrote:
What cracks me up about ebay is bidders never do their homework. It is a seller's marketplace. I bought one of these manuals two years ago from Digikey...I just checked and they had 32 in stock for $9.95 ea. If I had known that I could get it from Microchip for free I would have asked them for a copy. I just bought a new digital camera and it was typically going for $75-100 more on ebay than what I paid for mine at a retail store.